Tag Archives: health

Georgia to ban smoking, tighten cigarette packaging from 2018

TBILISI, MAY 31 2017 (The Bulletin)  — Tough new smoking laws will bring Georgian legislation in line with guidelines included in a trade and association agreement that Georgia signed with the EU this year, said Georgia’s public ombudsman.

The bill, approved by parliament on May 17, will impose tighter rules on cigarette packaging and advertising, as well as a blanket ban on smoking inside public buildings.

Georgia has been slower than its neighbours in following a global trend to clampdown on smoking, partially because restrictions are so unpopular among Georgia’s heavy- smoking population. The World Health Organisation said more than half of all Georgian men smoke and between 9,000 to 11,000 die from smoking-related diseases each year.

Georgia’s ombudsman praised the new regulations as a step towards improving public health and said it “ brought the applicable tobacco legislation in line with the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and the recommendations and the directives of the Georgia-EU Association Agreement”.

Smoking in Georgia is currently banned only in medical facilities, educational institutions and public transport. Most bars, pubs, cafes and restaurants allow smoking.

Dato Zaaliasvhili, the manager of Cafe Kala, a modern cafe, said that his business will not suffer.

“We have implemented a non-smoking policy in our cafe already and clients’ reaction have not been bad. Our businesses will not be negatively affected by the new legislation”, he said.

But Nato, the manager of the more traditional Old Keria, disagreed.

“The vast majority of our customers smoke,” she said. “This will badly affect my business.”

The new packaging regulations will be imposed from January 2018 and the ban on smoking in public buildings a few months later.

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Copyright ©Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 331, published on June 5 2017)

 

WHO and Tajikistan start measles programme

MAY 23 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The World Heath Organisation (WHO) and the Tajik authorities started a mass measles vaccination drive that will cover 2m children to combat a epidemic that they say has already infected 400 people. The measles outbreak has spread from the countryside to Dushanbe, forcing the authorities to launch the drive.

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(News report from Issue No. 330, published on May 28 2017)

 

Measles outbreak spreads in Tajikistan

MAY 16 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Aid agencies warned that a measles outbreak in Tajikistan had spread from the countryside into Dushanbe, the capital, and threatened to escalate. Several hundred, mainly children, have already been taken ill with measles. There have been no reports of any deaths.

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(News report from Issue No. 329, published on May 20 2017)

 

Ice cream poisons 100s in Uzbekistan

MAY 17 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Several hundred people were poisoned after eating ice cream in the Shahrian district of Andijan, in Uzbekistan’s Ferghana Valley, media reported. Hospitals said that they admitted 182 people into intensive care for poisoning. There have been, so far, no reports of any deaths.

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(News report from Issue No. 329, published on May 20 2017)

Kazakh president’s daughter backs health boost

APRIL 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Dariga Nazarbayeva, the eldest daughter of President Nursultan Nazarbayev and tipped by some analysts as his successor, has proposed boosting state investment into sport by 30%, media reported. Ms Nazarbayeva is now a senator. She had previously been a deputy PM.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

Presidential candidates in Kazakhstan need health test

MAY 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a draft law to be voted on by Kazakhstan’s parliament, candidates for future presidential elections will have to undergo a medical test. Pres. Nursultan Nazarbayev pushed through a raft of tweaks to the constitution earlier this year which he said were designed to shift power to parliament from the presidency in a move that makes Kazakhstan more democratic. His detractors have said that the changes tighten his control over power.

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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)

Turkmen president signs decree smoking by 2025

APRIL 16 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov signed a decree that will ban all cigarette smoking by 2025, making good on his promise to turn Turkmenistan into the world’s first smoking-free country.

Mr Berdymukhamedov has already banned selling cigarettes, making a show of burning piles of them.

There were no specific details of what Mr Berdymukhamedov had in mind with his ban on smoking but the move does fit with his drive to promote health and exercise in the country. He has starred in weight- lifting videos and has been depicted out jogging.

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(News report from Issue No. 325, published on April 17 2017)

People lose faith in Kazakhstan’s healthcare after two deaths

ALMATY, APRIL 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Two deaths in hospitals in Almaty this year have unnerved the normally phlegmatic residents of Kazakhstan’s most populous city.

Investigations have been launched into the death of 26-year- old Aleksey Gubenko who died in March at a private hospital while being treated for sinusitis and Yerzhan Kulbayev who died in a state-run hospital in January after having his kidney removed, apparently illegally to pay off a loan.

Trust in Kazakhstan’s healthcare system is waning, whether it is private or state. An opinion poll in January by the demos.kz website showed that 65% of people rated the healthcare at three out of five or lower and 61% of the respondents said that the healthcare staff were not competent.

For 24-year-old Leila, an accountant, news of the two deaths in hospital did not come as a surprise.

“I do not have any illusions regarding Kazakhstan’s healthcare system, so I am not surprised with these cases,” she said. “Obviously, I do not trust our doctors and state hospitals have big queues of people waiting too.”

Sergey, a taxi driver, said that it was better not to be sick in Kazakhstan and to avoid doctors.

“We are all mortal, you never know what will happen to you in half an hour,” he said.

“It is just better not to be sick and be less engaged with the healthcare system.”

Poor morale among staff and underfunding have characterised Kazakhstan’s healthcare system. In 2015, Almas Kurmanov, the then head of budget at the ministry of health told media that the healthcare budget needed to be doubled or tripled. He said that Kazakhstan was spending $254/person on health compared to an average in the OECD of $2,400/person.

Earlier this year too, five senior executives, including the CEO, at the state-run medicine distribution company SK-Pharmacy were sacked and arrested for bribe-taking.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Georgia Healthcare Group refurbishes hospital

APRIL 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — London-listed Georgia Healthcare Group said that it had finished the first phase of its redevelopment project on the Sunrise Hospital in Tbilisi and that it would partially re-opened this month. The 332-bed private hospital will be fully open by the end of the year. Georgia Healthcare Group is the largest private medical provider in Georgia. The redevelopment of the Sunrise Hospital is part of its plan to buy up and renovating underperforming hospitals.

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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)

Azerbaijan finds corpse in Caspian

MARCH 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Another male corpse was found in the Caspian Sea, possibly one of the missing men from an oil platform that collapsed into the Azerbaijani sector of the sea that killed 9 people in December. Bodies of the dead men have been washing up across the Caspian Sea coastline. The year before, at least 30 people had died when a storm caused a fire at a Caspian Sea oil rig.

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(News report from Issue No. 321, published on March 20 2017)